Wednesday, August 27, 2008

More Random Notes

SN1 was in town for a brief visit yesterday.Granddaughter Number One on his side of the house is relocating from South Carolina to California, and Buck is/was accompanying her on the drive out west as far as Albuquerque, where her Beloved would meet her and they would continue on to the GoldenState.At least that was the original plan.It seems like Felicity (GD1) has decided to spend a few days here in P-Ville and visit with old friends for a bit; Buck left for ABQ late last night to catch a plane back to South Carolina early this morning.

It goes without saying that any visit, however brief, from one’s offspring is a good visit… and so it was. I had a few errands to run yesterday, and Buck kept me company while I did what had to be done. And then we drank beer. I passed on the ceegars, as it was just too danged hot to sit outside. But we got caught up, talked shop (USAF) for more than a few, computers for a bit (and discovering that Mac vid I posted yesterday), hockey, family, women, etc., etc.. Typical Guy-Stuff, in other words. And then he went off to fulfill other family obligations and I took a nap. Because I can.

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I’m still fuming over the formatting change on the blog. As I’ve noted before, I write about 95% of my posts in MS-Word and then cut and paste the results into Blogger’s compose window. When I first began blogging I noticed that Blogger didn’t handle formatting applied in Word all that well… inserting what looks to be about five or six point spaces in between each paragraph. So, I adjusted my style template to accommodate that idiosyncrasy… which is to say there are NO spaces in between paragraphs when I use Word’s “normal” style. And now Blogger has suddenly applied the style to the blog exactly as it was written, to my great dismay. The bottom line is that all the paragraphs in ALL my posts seem to run together now, and that makes readability a problem. But… do I really want to go back and fix nearly 1,700 posts? Individually, one at a time? At about five minutes for each danged post, at the very least? NO frickin’ way.

I remain extremely pissed, and that’s putting it oh-so-mildly. I tend to be a stickler for look and feel on the printed (or pixilated) page, which is a hold over from my technical writing days. I’m one of the most anal-retentive SOBs on the face of the planet in this space, too. Which is why I’m pissed and not likely to get over it very soon, if at all. TMI, perhaps, but it is what it is, Gentle Reader.

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I was supposed to go in and visit with Dr. Thompson this morning, the objective being to add more artificial bone on the right side of my jaw, as I noted previously. Well, that’s all by the boards. I came up with another “infection,” an event that seems to pop up every couple of months or so, and this one is worse than most. These events, characterized by painful eruptions at random spots on my gums (never in the same place twice), usually heal themselves in about 48 hours or so. But as I noted, this one is worse than most. So… I decided to go see the Good Doctor yesterday and let him make the call as to whether or not we should proceed today, as planned. And: no go. Cancel, reschedule. I’ve been at a loss to explain why this sort of thing happens, but now I know. It seems I’m prone to getting candida… a minor fungal disease/infection which I’ve encountered before, but only in another context, and only in members of the opposite sex. Surprise! There’s an oral variant, too.

SN1 was quite amused when I explained to him what it was that’s afflicting me. I’ll not share the resulting banter, Gentle Reader. Like I said in my opening paragraph: Guy Talk.

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I’m pretty pleased with Firefox 3.0 so far, if only for ONE reason: that annoying failure to play videos has been fixed. I’d recommend upgrading to the latest version for that reason alone. FF 3.0 has a slightly different look and feel to it, but it’s nothing major. And the browser does seem faster, as the Mozilla Guys claim it to be. Doubtless I’ll discover other improvements and/or features as time moves on. Hopefully v 3.0 won’t be as big a memory hog when you have umpteen tabs open, as I always seem to do.

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Today’s Pics: Another couple of re-runs, albeit different from the ones I posted back in March of last year. I can be such a nerd at times, and part of the proof is the fact I took 17 different shots of a generic faucet drip. Well, maybe it’s not a generic drip… one could make a case for it being more of a special drip. Coz we most definitely are Special here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington, ya know.

Glad you had a nice visit with the family....it is nice, even if brief, I agree...

Firefox...hm....let me know if it locks up on you. I've been running it for about a week and it locks up at random and when I close it, it still seems to run in the back ground and I have to shut it down from the task manager...and if I leave it up in my laptop when it goes into hibernation...it is locked when I resume operation....and I have to once again shut it down....didn't do that with the last version...might be my laptop and the program....haven't contacted FF yet....

Jenny: Would you believe the two of them drove straight through from SC to P-Ville, stopping only for the requisite drain and refill operations? Ah... to be young again!

Jay: Thank ya, Sir!

ASW: 3.0 hasn't locked up on me (yet), but I did have an occasional issue with the previous version, which almost always was caused by some sort of conflict between FF and some other app. Computers: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. And it's too expensive to smash the damned things into tiny little bits of plastic, glass and metal... even when you KNOW it would do your soul SO much good.

Kris sez: I dunno Buck - I may be able to outpace you there. I'm a control freak and a perfectionist - it's a dangerous combo that can make me crazy, not-to-mention anyone around me.

Well, dunno so much about "dangerous," but I DO know that's an admirable trait in your line of work... necessary, even. But I hear ya: the words "good enough" make my skin crawl.

Thanks for the kind words about the pic, awareness, and such. We're on the same page.

Cody had a severe case of thrush as a baby. It took us 6 months to finally get rid of the stuff for good. The doctor said it was likely the result of him being on antibiotics the first week of his life.

Jeff and I once drove from Atlanta to P-ville straight thru in 23 hours. We were bringing back my horse and didn't want to have to try to get him out of the trailer. It was winter and we just wanted to get HOME.

Becky: Wow... six months is a looong time! Poor Cody! I did a bit of reading on the subject and don't think any of the causes apply to me, nor do I think the fungus has developed into something systemic. At least I HOPE not.

Barry sez: When I changed the template at enrevanche, I had similar problems - had to revert to a clean template and reinstall all the customizations... ugh.

That's what makes this really weird... I didn't change one single thing on the blog, nor did I change anything in my posting process. Nada. Zip. It just got hosed, for NO apparent reason.

Jenny: Doing a straight thru drive of that duration in winter is pretty danged impressive.

I think my "personal best" is from Biloxi, MS to Flagstaff, AZ in a single sitting, back in 1968. And I was alone for that run... no co-driver. That was one coffee-fueled, head out the window, miserable drive, as I recall.